From a post-war suburban community, multi-unit dwellings and single family residences to furniture and trucks, the work of Bertrand Goldberg follows a fairly straight trajectory of experimentation from the Bauhaus in the 30s through Chicago in the 80s.

By maintaining an aesthetic of clean lines while pushing engineering envelopes—none more famous than Marina City and River City in Chicago—Goldberg’s sculptural forms and engineering feats left us with outstanding dramatic effects.

Seventy years ago, during the German invasion of the Soviet Union, a group of artists and writers banned together within the TASS News Agency in Moscow to reassure Soviet citizens— and to rouse Allies—via large-scale posters.

Despite the rule of Joseph Stalin, creativity flourished among these diverse artists and writers as they found purpose while working within the totalitarian state.

Committed to the defense of the motherland, artists produced a poster nearly every day of the war with labor-intensive technical virtuosity—some of them 5’ to 10’ tall with upwards of 60 to 70 color divisions.

Featuring 250 posters—155 of which are the large-scale stenciled versions—it’s their first display in the US since WWII.

In collaboration with LACMA and the Watts House Project, an artist-driven urban revitalization project centered around the historic Watts Towers, Ybarra, Diaz, and Slanguage, the artist’s team of collaborators, participated in a residency at the home of longtime residents of Watts, the Garcia family.

Featuring assemblage, folk art, vernacular graphics, images of the Watts Towers and art from the LACMA collection selected by the artist which connect the art works from the Watts site to the LACMA campus.

The core of the exhibition takes its point of reference from the legacy of Simon Rodia, local folk artist and creator of the Watts Towers, and the impulse to create alternative or possible worlds out of unconventional materials and unorthodox impulses.

Including more than 200 models and objects by Dieter Rams, as well as contemporary designs inﬂuenced by his Ten Principles of Good Design, this exhibit highlights one of the most influential industrial designers of all times.

For more than 40 years, Rams was the lead designer for Braun and an active designer for Vitsœ. During his career, Rams and his teams produced innovative ideas and projects that have become not only the basis for contemporary design—both industrial and graphic—but iconic mainstays as well.

Los Angeles, 2011
Art that seems to have derived from cave paintings, dating anywhere between 30,000 and 40,000 years old, has come full circle to a recognized art form that lives outside museums and galleries—that is post-graffiti or street art.

Mainly symbols or depictions of animals, primitive cave paintings, like those found in southern France or outside Sydney in the Black Fellows Hands Reserve—a protected national park featuring ancient aboriginal art in the form of cave paintings—later gave way to a wider variety of mediums and subjects as man evolved.

photo by: deflamOver time paintings made their way on to fabric, and etchings to paper, as those materials became more readily available.

Invented in the 1400s by the Holy Roman Empire, the printing press not only changed societies as information and ideas were shared with a broader audience, images and words could be mass produced from metal or lithographic plates—scratched limestone. Revolutionary since art had always been a singular, unique piece.

And as paintings evolved into large murals, such as Diego Rivera’s commissioned works in New York in the 1940s, perhaps they inspired artists—with natural talents who didn’t fit the mold of studio artists—to become street artists.

Milan, 2009Whether the word graffiti originated from the Greek graphein, to write, or the Italian graffiato, scratched, graffiti artists “write” on urban surfaces—walls of buildings, bridges, or the sides of rail cars—to express themselves. And they’ve been increasingly regarded as artists in their own right with voices yearning to be recognized, but often unable to expose their true identities ironically because of the medium.

But times are changing—in 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti art at the Grand Palais in Paris—an obvious acceptance of the art form by the art world. And in 2011, Exit Through the Gift Shop, a Banksy film, was nominated for an Academy Award.

Street art has evolved in and of itself—from 2-D paintings, stencils and stickers, to 3-D mosaics, yarn bombs, installations and video projections.

And in the meantime, traditional graffiti art has been adopted as its own graphic art style.

additional films on the subject:Stations of the Elevated, 1980, the earliest documentary about subway graffiti in New York City features music by Charles MingusAgainst the Wall, aka, Quality of Life, 2004, was shot in the Mission District of San Francisco, stars and was co-written by a retired graffiti writer.Piece by Piece, 2005, the history of San Francisco graffiti is documented from the early 1980s to present day.Infamy, 2005, graffiti culture is defined by the experiences of six graffiti writers and one graffiti buffer.NEXT: A Primer on Urban Painting, 2005, covers the graffiti culture on a global scale.RASH, 2005, features street artists in contemporary Melbourne, Australia.Bomb the System, 2002, a drama about a crew of graffiti artists in modern day New York City.Bomb It, 2007, a graffiti and street art documentary filmed on five continents.Jisoe, 2007, shares a glimpse into the life of a Melbourne graffiti writer Justin Hughes. Roadsworth: Crossing the Line, 2009, features Montréal artist Peter Gibson.